Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:15am

IRS Scandal: You Are Going to Love Obamacare!

 

 

This is almost getting farcial.  The IRS bureaucrat in charge of the tax exempt division of the IRS during the persecution of conservative groups is now the head of ObamaCare enforcement for the IRS.

Sarah Ingram

 

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reacted to the revelation in a brief statement late Thursday.

“Stunning, just stunning,” McConnell, R-Ky. stated.

For her “good” work, Sarah the Enforcer got over 100k in bonuses during the four years of the Obama administration on top of her 170k salary:

Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.

 

 

With Sarah in charge of ObamaCare enforcement, I can see it now.  “We will need a bit more information from you to determine if you will have to pay an ObamaCare penalty.  Please send us a list of your donations to political organizations for the past decade and we will get right back to you.  Failure to comply with this request could lead to an assessment of fines and a possible all expense paid trip to Guantanamo.  Have a very nice day!”

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Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 6:37am

uh oh. “t’ain’t funny McGee!” I just had my 65 birthday. Born in 1948- I am on the problem…
I will tell you what the IRS already knows about me- I am a cancer survivor ( 14 years) and a heart attack survivor (2.5 years). As a matter of fact I have survived a lot of stuff – (raising 5 kids) but, given that record,it might be my biggest challenge to survive this culture of death as my birthdays continue. I am already known to be a catechist of the Catholic Church for crying out loud! I also am the owner of one “Santorum” vest and have a pro-life bumper sticker on my car.
O am not entirely a “useless eater” yet… I volunteer in lots of places… teach bible study–…oh wait. did I say that outloud? I mean..

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 7:12am

“No stent for you.” Rick Santelli.

Not to worry.

The sooner we get to Heaven the better.

J. Christian
J. Christian
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 7:49am

Her position is at least 3 levels in the org chart above the Determinations Unit in Cincinnati where most of the nefarious deeds were done. If you read the IG report, the remarkable thing about the timeline of events in the appendix is how little this senior level of management was involved in this matter. I know that everyone wants to claim that the scandal was somehow orchestrated by the Obama Administration, but from all appearances, it wasn’t even orchestrated by the senior leadership of the IRS!

Now, you can claim mismanagement or the top brass being asleep at the wheel, but that’s a very different thing (with a different burden of proof) than saying there was some sort of criminality malfeasance involved on the part of higher-ups. In fact, again looking at the timeline of events in the IG report, the one thing that jumps out is that as soon as these inappropriate criteria were briefed to senior leaders, the subordinates were ordered to stop it immediately.

If you wonder why government bureaucracy is so… bureaucratic, one reason is political theater like this. I have no doubt that certain individuals within the IRS, because of personal bias, felt that they could get away with some conservative-hating because of this growth in 501c4 organizations. The result of all this will just be to have the government double down on its inefficient, risk-averse culture of having everything approved through 8 layers of management.

The truth of this scandal may be more troubling than conservatives wish to contemplate: it doesn’t take the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, or even Deputy Commissioners of the IRS to lead this sort of inappropriate activity. Clearly, from the IG report, it can go on for a long time under the radar before it finally blows up.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 7:55am

“Now, you can claim mismanagement or the top brass being asleep at the wheel, but that’s a very different thing (with a different burden of proof) than saying there was some sort of criminality malfeasance involved on the part of higher-ups.”

Yet the top leadership seems to be lying about it. If they were just asleep at the wheel, why would they lie?

http://philanthropy.com/article/IRS-Rationale-for-Tea-Party/139277/

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 7:57am

Also, if you listen to the report Don originally linked, there were requests by Senators to target conservative groups. These requests were shredded. Why? By whom? Was it just low level types that decided to shred the evidence?

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 8:06am

Throw into this that the recently “fired” acting head of the IRS, Steven Miller, was involved in politically tainted IRS investigations during the Clinton Administration:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/deja-vu-irs-boss-of-tea-party-probes-targeted-anti-clinton-group-in-1990s/article/2529533

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 10:33am

The president and the WH set the tone. This could not have occurred without WH involvement.

Them bureaucrats precisely know what they can and can’t do. Every agency has specific sets (hundreds of pages of jibberish) of delegated authoity for each and every act.

Why do you think the Internal Revenue Code is (what?) 147,000 pages long.

They would not try such criiminal activiitiy if they thought anyone would question it.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 10:36am

: ) you are right T Shaw- I know I should be able to say with St Paul that to live is Christ and to die is gain– but I’d rather apply Augustine from another subject – “not yet!”

“it doesn’t take the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, or even Deputy Commissioners of the IRS to lead this sort of inappropriate activity” BUT the president definitely creates the climate for such things- “‘if they bring a knife we bring a gun.” someone on the news yesterday- I think Olson, the solicitor general under Reagan- brought up the quote from the king of England- “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest” that brought about the murder of Thomas a Becket.

also, I agree with Philip that the senators who requested targeting should be hauled up

J. Christian
J. Christian
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 11:18am

“This could not have occurred without WH involvement.”

Not true. Tone- and climate-setting aside, it most certainly could’ve been done without direction from the WH. And everything that isn’t hearsay at this point (i.e., the IG report) indicates that it was done without mgmt approval. Until such time that we find evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is the one that reigns.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 11:37am

J. Christian -are you serious? there is involvement even if it is not formal. how can you set aside tone and climate setting? What is the simple explanation that reigns now? that some low level employees went rogue?
I’m simple but not a simpleton

J. Christian
J. Christian
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 11:48am

Anzlyne, are you serious? Did you read something in the IG report that I didn’t? Just because Obama hates the Tea Party does not mean he directed the IRS to harass them. You can say “he sets the tone,” but that’s not the same thing as demonstrating evidence of a conspiracy.

philip
philip
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 12:50pm

Analyze-

Set the tone indeed!
2008 commencement address @ N.D.
( …a reasonable conscience clause. Enter HHS mandate.)

This Ship of Fools has a rotton to the core Capt.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 2:42pm

Kevin Williamson says it well:

I myself doubt very much that the president or any of his immediate circle had a hand in this — it is in the nature of the Left (and in the nature of political power itself) that no marching orders from the top are necessary. University presidents do not tell hiring committees to discriminate against conservative academics, they just do it. No president or Treasury secretary had to tell the IRS to do this.

In some ways, the received version of events is worse than would be a top-directed cabal of rogue IRS agents acting on orders from political superiors. A corrupt element within an agency can be rooted out, and a criminal conspiracy can be unraveled. When the agency is the criminal conspiracy, then the challenge of reform becomes that much greater.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 3:00pm

Some of the metrics that have been offered in recent days on campaign contributions would indicate that the Cincinnati office is actually quite a bit different than the IRS as a whole – rather like a cancer cluster. I will bet quite a number of those working there are in the market segment which buys books like The Politics of Truth or What’s the Matter with Kansas or collections of Robin Welles’ columns under her husband’s byline.

I have been in an online discussion in recent days and one of the participants offered that the IRS agents may have been inspired to give extra scrutiny to these applications by the suicide of a disgruntled taxpayer in February 2010 (the man flew a plane into the IRS headquarters in Austin, Tx). This surmise is perfectly non sequitur, but he offered it as if it were self-evident. The lefty mind seems to work that way – everything they find disagreeable is treated as a function of the same social process. So, Sarah Palin is somehow responsible for the acts of a schizophrenic in Phoenix who had not had a coherent thought in years and a Republican housewife attempting to organize a political action committee in Boise is properly identified with a suicidal man in Austin, Tx who was not involved in local politics. In some other social matrix, there would have been a critical mass of people who said ‘whiskey-tango-foxtrot’. I will wager you the Cincy IRS office is not that matrix (and neither are any but a few arts-and-sciences faculties).

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 3:44pm

RE: setting the tone. Ob “joked” in 2009 about using the IRS against his enemies. All heads of US agencies are political appointees. They set the tone they recieve from on high.

NYT never printed anything like Nixon didn’t know what the boys were doing that night . . .

The US is no longer a free country. The free American people have been overwhelmed by armies of blood-sucking, academic and bureaucrat leeches and 50,000,000 people that vote for their livelihoods.

Anzlyne: Nor am I in any hurry. And I am not doing anything (except cigars, don’t tell my lung doc) to hasten the date. I’m 62+ years, had cancer and was healed. Can’t run anymore. That’s ok. I hated it.

Queen Mary said, “My end is my beginning.”

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, May 17, AD 2013 3:55pm

yah- I don’t know what matrix they might be. but I get your point. people hang around people who think like them.. part of our narcissism I guess.
The media helps with the climate control too- reinforcing all things Left right now, it seems.
But I can’t think the office in Cincinnati is that isolated from rest of Left onslaught led by Obama. Just a malignant Tumor, which if dealt with, we could have once again a good prognosis. No I don’t think so. I think it is a part of the trending polarization and animosity for American life as we know it.
There’s clusters everywhere- what about the malignant department of education in California? How about the Department of Ag? The Pentagon? State department? DOJ?

Don the Kiwi
Don the Kiwi
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 12:13am

Mr McClarey.

Be very very careful.
We have your name, address, occupation, your political leanings, your anti-choice activism, your religious discriminatory inclinations, your family –
You are a targetted majority.
signed: IRS Special Investigations Branch. 🙂

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 12:32am

I am heartened to note that thew outgoing commissioner has already received his due punishment. He got grilled by Charlie Rangel, one of the most notarious tax cheats in American history. If that is not justice what is?

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 12:38am

What do you call an IRS office in Cincinnati who uses Communist like tactics to harass private citizens? The Cincinnati Reds of course.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 5:52am

Seen on Facebook:

Obama could be caught on video-tape beating to death a little, old lady with a puppy-dog and the Obama-worshiping imbeciles would whine, “What difference does it make?”.

No stent for you, Mac.

You are being taxed to death and overwhelmed by overly-empowered bureaucrats/regulators and people that vote for a living.

What can you do?

Implement “Irish democracy.” See James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism.

James
James
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 8:17am

“This is almost getting farcial.” I don’t think there is anything farcial about it. The Democratic party has truly become the Communist party, and they are slamming the hammer of Communism down upon this country. I do not think anything short of the intervention of God Himself will slow the Communist steamroller.

Pat
Pat
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 9:19am

” Having law abiding folk like my client fearful because she has disagreed with the government is not what the Founding Fathers intended, and is precisely the type of tyranny they rebelled against. Ill fares the land. ”

There are so many agencies, Departments of …, courts, and schools in local, regional, state, and federal jurisdictions and societies that insure the fear.

Jeanne Rohl
Jeanne Rohl
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 9:39am

James, I think you are correct. Everyone of us who still believes needs to be on our knees(if they will hold, you old geezers can sit in a chair) and continue to do what Our Lady has said to do. She can intercede to her Son. We need them as we have never needed them before. And to the lady who is terrified about her subversive involvement in social issues etc, you will be ok. Many years ago when I felt I was being “harassed” by rs I pulled back because of my kids and grandkids. Then one day I just looked at the crucifix and said, “Lord, you put me here with this big mouth and I’m not going to be silenced. You are in control and I trust You with my life and the kids life and the farms life.” Still here, still farming, still have family intact. Easy no! Scary yes(especially when you keep getting condoms in your mailbox and you have to keep replacing your yard signs because of the buckshot ruining it) I turned to saving babies “under cover” teaching 9th grade CCD for over 18 years with the mantra of ” Boys and Girls, When on the last day you meet the Lord you cannot say that “no one ever told me that was wrong” because you will see my big fat face right in front of you” I have continued. As I have said before “Nothing strikes fear in the heart of a US citizen more than registered tax audit notices. Lived through three so far and what doesn’t kill you makes you tougher. Think my gram said that.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 10:03am

Obama is a fairly typical product of Chicago Democrat politics, and he has brought the corruption and thuggishness that are the predominant characteristics of those politics onto the national scene.

Must disagree. Obama has little patience for or interest in the precinct captain’s work. He is a performer, not a patronage broker, and shows little evidence of caring about much going on outside his skin. People in a position to know have said that the Cuomos – father and son – are thugs at heart; Rahm Emmanuel’s appalling character is well known; it is difficult to believe that Obama has that level of emotional engagement with much of anything. He is not Chicago; he is the modal professional-managerial type you can find in large numbers in any metropolis or any college-town outside the South; he is the NPR target audience. That’s the problem.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 2:43pm

Actually, Art and Don, I think you are both partially right. I’m reminded of an old joke in which Albert Einstein, or another famous scientist or intellectual, meets Marilyn Monroe or another woman known primarily for her looks rather than her intellect. The woman speculates about what it would be like if the two had a child together with her beauty and his brains. To which he responds “Yes, Madam, but what if she has MY beauty and YOUR brains?”

Obama really isn’t a traditional Chicago pol of the Mayor Daley (senior and junior) mold. He wasn’t born and raised there, nor does he regard local office as a higher calling than state or federal office. He did not, as Art notes, adopt any of the “constitutent service” aspects of Chicago politics such as walking precincts, going to wakes and rubber chicken dinners, making sure people in your ward get their garbage picked up and their streets plowed of snow in a timely fashion, etc. He did, however, adopt their “they bring a knife, you bring a gun” approach to dealing with your opposition.

Likewise, he seems to have picked up the arrogance and detachment of the academic world without too much of the serious intellectual work. In an ideal world, I suppose, Obama could have combined the best aspects of academia with the know-your-constituents street-smarts of Chicago politics; instead he seems to have combined the worst of both worlds.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 5:49pm

Handing out goodies to your clientele has been the modus operandi of every Democratic member of Congress not named “Andrew Jacobs Jr”. Not specific to Chicago. Other offenders: farm belt Republicans and the gelatinous character who currently runs the House Appropriations Committee.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, May 18, AD 2013 7:12pm

Oh, could be. The thing is, the political culture being what it is, I doubt that would be necessary. You recall Mark Steyn’s assessment of the relationship between the President and the CIA ca. 2004 – that it seemed similar to the relationship between Gen. Musharraf and the Pakistani ISI – applies here. You have crudniks like Joseph C. Wilson and Valerie Plame hiding in the Foreign Service and the intelligence services; I cannot imagine they do not have their equivalents in the IRS – just that the IRS characters are trained in accounting and do not lie with the brazen facility that Ambassador Wilson and his trophy wife manage. If her behavior over the past week is a guide, Mrs. Lerner has not one-tenth the chutzpah necessary to put her byline on a book with a title like The Politics of Truth.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Sunday, May 19, AD 2013 2:41am

Thanks Don! Another good analogy for Obama’s blending of academia and Chicago politics would be the rabage — a hybrid of radishes and cabbage developed back in the 1920s by a hapless Soviet botanist. His goal was to produce a vegetable with the sturdy leaves of a cabbage and the plump, edible root of a radish. What he got was — you guessed it — radish leaves and cabbage roots, neither of which are remotely palatable.

philip
philip
Sunday, May 19, AD 2013 8:47am

Elaine and Donald-
Thanks. Two great analogies.

At Holy Mass this morning I’m reminded of my huge inability to forgive. Barack and my forgiveness to him is a bridge under construction, and reading your analysis of the current events and it helps.
Thank you and pardon my sophomoric rants.

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